


Close

by anomieow



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Addiction, Alcoholism, Anal Sex, Angst, Dirty Talk, Impotence, Kissing, Lowkey topson, M/M, Masturbation, Oral Sex, Past Prostitution, Praise Kink, Withdrawal, alternating pov, bad drunk Crozier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-05
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:14:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23023825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anomieow/pseuds/anomieow
Summary: Jopson slides the captain’s right epaulet into place, adjusts it minutely, and steps back. “Let us see, sir,” he says.The older man stands still for inspection, his arms extended before him and a glint of amusement in his eye. With nimble fingers, Thomas plucks a hair from his sleeve—the man’s own, warm silver—and nods once, a neat and practiced dip of the chin conveying approval.“What would I do,” Crozier queries with a sly cock of his brow, “without you to tend to me?” His gaze flicks to Jopson’s lips. “I might have to take a wife.”
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Thomas Blanky (past), Captain Francis Crozier/Thomas Jopson
Comments: 39
Kudos: 88





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first chapter of 3 or 4. It’s my first stab at Terror fan fiction and the first fic I’ve written in 5 or 6 years, so I apologize for its awkwardness.

“Close is nothing,” Captain Crozier is explaining in that flexuous brogue of his. “It’s worse than nothing. It’s worse than anything in the world.” Thomas Jopson, his steward, turns this over in his head once, twice, and sets it aside for later rumination: at the core of every jest Crozier makes, Jopson knows, is something difficult and true. Jopson, who finds himself rather humorless company, admires this about the man. 

He slides the captain’s right epaulet into place, adjusts it minutely, and steps back.

“Let us see, sir,” he says. The older man stands still for inspection, his arms extended before him and a glint of amusement in his eye. With nimble fingers, Thomas plucks a hair from his sleeve—the man’s own, warm silver—and nods once, a neat and practiced dip of the chin conveying approval. 

“What would I do,” Crozier queries with a sly cock of his brow, “without you to tend to me?” His gaze flicks to Jopson’s lips. “I might have to take a wife.” 

Jopson is grateful his complexion hides the heat in his cheeks.

——————

Jopson has grown accustomed to finding Crozier like this—slouched in his chair, a half-emptied glass at his elbow, glowering with glittering eyes into the darkness. Jopson steps into the room and clears his throat softly. Crozier starts. “Jesus, Jopson. Nearly sent me to the hereafter.”

“I apologize, sir. Shall I resume knocking, as before?” 

Crozier waves his hand vaguely. “Just make some noise,” he grumbles. “Shuffle your feet in the hall or something. Quieter than a goddamned cat, you are.” Crozier has, of course, been at his whiskey. Jopson can hear it in his voice: his brogue is deeper and has taken on a brusque warmth not unlike the taste of the whiskey on his tongue. Jopson’s tasted it once or twice, whiskey—he enjoyed the burn of it in his throat, but could not tolerate the way the world seemed to fall loose of itself, its implicit rules no longer binding him. He does not trust his choices without them. 

He busies himself neatening the cabin. He lights a candle, produces a rag, wipes up a little whiskey splashed onto an unfurled map, weighted down at its corners with the decanter and the half-emptied glass. “Would you like to hear the news of the world, sir?”

“Oh, Christ, no...” then, in a coyer voice, he asks, “where did you learn to creep about so?” 

The question catches Jopson off guard. Some of it he would not talk about, even if he could find the words: the usefulness of making oneself unobtrusive, amiable, first as an exceptionally lovely young man among older ones, then as the son of—he can’t bear to think of it, how temperamental she became, explosive and mawkishly doting at turns—so he simply decides he will not answer. 

Crozier, Jopson is pleased to note, is less restrained in his gaze when he’s been drinking. Now, he’s turned in his chair, charting with the knowing eye of a born explorer the lean, muscular geography of Jopson’s body as he glides about the cabin. He’s been leered at before, but this is something richer and more electric. 

He’s been bolder with his hands, too. A few nights before, having been dressed for bed and tucked nicely in, he’d reached up and rested his callused palm at the juncture between Jopson’s throat and collarbone. And they’d just gazed at each other for a long, dizzying moment—one’s eyes the color of calm sea and the other open sky. But then Crozier had dropped his hand abruptly and stiffly bade his steward goodnight.

Jopson, of course, had hurried back to his own berth and taken himself in hand immediately. He hated to do it: it adds to the wash, for one thing. For another, he’s always found that it robs the act of its joy to do it with the restraint and haste required of such close quarters. 

“I’m not always so quiet,” he confides now with a soft smile as he leans over Crozier’s shoulder from behind. His cheeks blaze and his hand trembles wildly as he reaches for the half-emptied glass. All that is proper in him, the part of him who knows well and good his place in the world, warns him to halt, reminds him it is his place (if he will have a place at all in this sort of act between men) to be wooed like a maid. But in a moment of searing clarity he realizes he is less afraid than Crozier is. 

So he drops his voice to a murmur, the heat of each breathed word gliding along the curve of the other man’s ear, caroming off the hollow of his jaw, and says, “as a matter of fact, under some circumstances, I am... quite vocal. Sir.” 

He can feel Crozier’s breath quickening, growing shallow; he can see down the slope of his torso how awkwardly he clasps his hands over the beginnings of arousal. Then in one moment the last charged minim of distance between them is closed as Jopson brushes his lips against Crozier’s, a ghost of a kiss.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m a sucker for a cliffhanger.

Crozier arches his neck to return the kiss; the position being such an awkward one he sweeps his lips by mistake across Jopson’s chin. Crozier smiles against his jaw. This close, he smells tea on Jopson’s breath, the bitter black tea everyone aboard drinks—and the faint lilt of violet water clinging to the thin stubble on his jaw. Crozier has caught that scent before without knowing its origin, a teasing drift of something tender and clean, gone before he could track it. Subtle—Jopson must apply it for himself and himself alone. A genuflection to a life left behind.

Jopson steps around to the front of the chair and straddles Crozier’s lap. To hold on, he grips one arm around the back of the chair and rests his other palm rather sternly against the back of Crozier’s neck. Then he hooks his ankles around the legs of the chair, pinning Crozier down with the spread musculature of his thighs. He gives an experimental thrust of his hips: he couldn’t move if he wanted to. 

“Sir, if I am taking liberties...” Jopson says uncertainly. 

“Take _every_ liberty, lad,” Crozier says hoarsely, clutching Jopson’s ass with both hands. Then Jopson’s mouth is back on his, tongue seeking a way in—ah, there’s that trace of black tea again, steeped in meltwater and taken without sugar. Crozier knows he will never again taste the ship’s tea without thinking of this moment, _this,_ his own lips parting, letting the other in. The flavors of tea and whiskey mingling. 

Abruptly, Jopson pulls his mouth away and leans back. Christ, but he’s beautiful: ruddy-cheeked, with that familiar subdued smile playing on his mouth and his sea-green eyes deep with desire and something else, sly and glad. 

_Pity,_ , hisses that familiar voice in the back of Crozier’s mind. _He pities you._ It’s his own voice he hears, the part of him that is dog-whipped Irish, beaten, glass in hand, snarling. In this moment he sees himself as Jopson must—pock-marked, gap-toothed, nearly old enough to be his father. Too much whiskey to get his flag past half-mast. Of course that’s pity in Jopson’s eyes—what else could it be? And why would he do any of this, if not out of some misbegotten, cheap sense of sympathy?

He closes his own eyes so that if his words evoke relief, he will not witness it. “Jopson,” he says quietly, “I hope you are aware that your obligation to me does not extend this far.”

Jopson only grasps him by the hand and pulls it to rest on his burgeoning cock. “Does this feel like obligation to you?” It is then that Crozier recognizes what it is in Jopson’s eyes: it is his familiar ferocious affection, stripped now of deference. Crozier’s old rage, that feral dog, turns three times and lies down again in the darkness behind his heart. 

“Now then,” Jopson asks with a teasing roll of his hips, “what do we do about it?” His fingers twine their way up Crozier’s scalp before roughly grasping a palmful of hair at the crown and leveraging his head back to get at the tender flesh along his throat and beneath his jaw. “I am entirely...” he murmurs, his breath muffled as he traces a blazing path with pointed tongue and open lips along the curve of Crozier’s adam’s apple, “...at your disposal, Sir.”

“You know damned well—“ he gasps as the other man nips his collarbone, “—it is I who am at yours, Thomas.” His Christian name is instinctive on his tongue and speaking it, he hopes the other man understands what he is offering up: anything. All things.

Thomas smiles against his throat, there, where his pulse pounds; Francis feels this with the same singular intensity with which he feels the good, patient pain of his thighs wedged against the edge of his chair, the dim throb, so rare these days, of a half-decent erection of his own; he feels too the steady, proprietary grip in his hair by hands made strong by years of service to him. Mending rips, banishing stains with a magician’s adroitness, summing the thorny arithmetic of his pantries. Soaking his fingers til they were ruched and raw in frigid water so that he, Francis, could sleep on clean sheets. That Francis should now give himself entirely over to those hands—nothing in the world has ever seemed more natural. 

“What would you have of me?” he asks.

Thomas slides off his lap, leaving a profound emptiness: how neatly they’d fit. He gestures for Francis to also rise, which he does, uncertainly, and immediately seats himself, legs relaxed open and a trace of a smirk on his lips. “Sir,” he asks in a low, silken voice, his gaze meeting Francis’ with the boldness of an equal’s, “would you like to please me, truly?”

“I would,” Francis says, sinking to his knees. He can barely breathe; his hands shake as they clasp Thomas’ knees—if he has ever wanted anything more than to feel the warm heft of Thomas’ cock in his hands, he certainly can’t recall it now. He reaches for Thomas’ waistband. “Please,” he whispers. And it feels like prayer.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is basically smut. There is mention of past prostitution/financial coercion against Jopson so if that squicks you I just want you to have a heads-up.

It is generally Jopson’s sacredly-held view that turmoil on the inside needn’t show on the out. By this precept he comports not only himself, but through daily ministrations and ablutions, assures Captain Crozier’s success by seeing that he abides by the same. Even now, he is impeccable: but for the ridge of hard flesh straining against the crotch of his high-waisted trousers, there is not one iota amiss. A quick sweep of his fingertips through his hair satisfies him that even his recalcitrant forelock is where it should be. 

Francis, on the other hand, is a vision of disarray. His hair is mussed; his collar is worked open and askew, revealing flushed flesh on musculature just beginning to soften. A young bruise on his collar, placed just where no one will see. One must be discreet. But Thomas relishes it all the same. Francis is his, after all, just as much as he belongs to the captain. 

Impulsively, he reaches forward and strokes the bruise with his thumb. Francis takes his hand and lifts it to his mouth, slipping the thumb between his lips. Bites gently. It is—there are no words for how good it feels. He wonders distantly if Francis has ever done this before. Seduction, yes. No innocent would look at him the way Francis looks at him now as he hollows his cheeks around, now, his index finger. But might he be the first man he’s served this way? He feels a fresh sweep of heat in the base of his gut. He likes the idea of his being the first cock in his captain’s mouth.

He’s done and received before what is about to be done for him, but it’s always been his side of a transaction: his prick or his soft, open mouth in indifferent exchange for something needed. Shoes for his brother, once. He nearly grimaces to think of it. The wealthy neighbor who gave him the money for them was a paunchy, hunched-over lech who’d kissed him afterward, as though it weren’t mere business. He recalls the smell of the man: sherried breath, mildew in the folds of his cravat. Sourness in the nooks of his body. With his next honest pay Thomas bought a bit of violet water and has not gone without since, even here. Though some days he longs for a confessor, he will not make one out of Crozier. It is bad enough to have lived it. 

“It suits you well,” he says instead, biting back the instinctive ‘sir’, “kneeling. Do you like being on your knees before me?”

He nods. 

“I should like to hear you say it.”

Francis’ gaze flicks and the muscles of his jaw tense and loosen, tense and loosen. For a terrible moment Thomas thinks he has gone too far. He’d only meant to relieve the man of the burden of authority, not gall him. But then Francis closes his eyes and exhales slowly. “Yes,” he murmurs, his voice rough. “I like it.”

“You like what, Francis?” There: the greatest risk he’ll take. 

Francis’ nostrils flare and he will not meet Thomas’ gaze, but his voice is thick with want. “I like being on my knees. For you. Feels... right.” 

“I know it does,” Thomas says with a soft smile as he frees his cock from his trousers. Francis scoots closer and reaches greedily for it, his calloused hands as warm as summer light. The contrast of the cool air and the heat of his captain’s grip is divine—how will he bear his mouth? He bites his own tongue, hard. It will not do to spend on his lover’s wrist like a boy with a doxy. 

Francis is tentative at first. Thomas nevertheless gives such a low, raw moan that he throws his own hand over his mouth. If he isn’t careful he’ll alert both ships, and Christ and His grandmother besides. At this, a sly, familiar glint sparks in Francis’ eye and his eyebrow quirks up. As Francis grips the base and begins to move up and down, his fist chasing his lips and his tongue tensed along the under-ridge,Thomas grabs him by the hair to slow him down. His hips tilt up, relax, tilt up. Together they rock into a steady rhythm beneath Thomas’ stern hand.

There are enough small adjustments, is enough trepidation, to satisfy Thomas that Francis is a novice at this particular act. “Christ, sir—“ he says, barely daring to breathe the words for fear of shouting them, “—it’s—you’re—divine, sir; a, ah, pardon me sir—oh, like _that_ —a born cocksucker, you are—and you love it, don’t you, I can tell, captain of this whole goddamned ship down on his knees with a mouthful of cock, _my_ cock—it feels, it feels... ah—perfect, sir, doesn’t it—fucking Christ, but you were made for this, weren’t you, to—ah—” All of this pours out in a panting whisper, synchronized with his increasingly quickening breath, so it takes on the lulling cadence of love poetry read aloud. 

What undoes him is Francis locking eyes with him as he nods, _yes,_ he was made for this, and nothing more. “Christ,” he manages then, “I’m—close, careful sir—” He releases Francis’ hair from his grip so he can back away if he wishes. But Francis only slides his mouth down as far as he can go without gagging, nearly to the root. Thomas bites into his forearm to stifle an echoing moan and bucks so hard that Francis must grab his thighs to hold on. And then the divine, dilated moments of climax, that holy and pure goodness whose praises he longs to sing aloud: but he can only curse into his arm and coat Francis’ mouth and throat with seed.

Francis wipes his mouth with the back of his hand before undoing his own waistband. His cock, shorter and thicker than Thomas’, springs up from pubic hair still copper bright. He begins to frig himself roughly, not daring to look at Thomas, but Thomas stops him. “Sir,” he says, tucking his forelock—which has crept out of place—back behind his ear. “Allow me.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We’re talking about the lashings here, and working with drunk not-nice Crozier. And nothing very sexy happens. 
> 
> Also, sorry about the short chapter lengths. It’s because of the alternating POV but I may consolidate into just a few chapters at some point.

“Leave off,” Crozier grumbles, unwilling to meet the other’s eye as his cock softens in his hand. If his failure perturbs Jopson, it doesn’t show—he is as composed as ever as, with a final fond pat (as though _it_ were a toy dog, god damn him—) he tucks his captain back into his trousers and fastens them. 

“Sir,” he says, “it’s all right.”

“The whiskey, perhaps.”

“Perhaps, sir.” He then busies himself neatening the cabin, as though all that happened was a mere interruption of the evening’s routine. Crozier cannot reconcile his— _say it, see how the word tastes,_ —master of an half hour before with the obsequious man he sees now, head bowed and shoulders slightly stooped as he straightens things and whips his little rag about. 

Yes. Obsequious. He’s finally pinned down the perfect word for the only thing about Jopson that bothers him. Who knows what a man can hide behind such a pleasing mask? (The old rage rises, its hackles bristling, and paces the length of his chain.) _How naturally he scrapes and bows before you,_ Crozier broods, _the man who just now saw you service him like—like a maid servicing the lord of her manor._ This thought dispatches a surge of blood south and a rippling clenching through his fists and teeth, desire and fury at once.

He neatly downs a drink and gestures mutely for another. Though his body has betrayed him (and he’s goddamned sorry for it) his desire for Jopson is unabated. Hell, it’s keener now. Deeper. Once as a lad he’d sliced his fingertip open with a blade so sharp he’d felt his heart pulse in his fingertips and seen blood before he felt any pain. It terrified him more than any pain could, to tap such a vital vein without even knowing it. But now that longing is adulterated with rage, humiliation: it has made itself at home. 

“I’m very tired,” He says gruffly as Jopson pours him a glass of whiskey. “We may—perhaps—discuss this another time. At present you may go, mm?”

“Will you dress yourself for bed, then, sir?”

“I’m quite capable of it.”

“Sir.” Jopson bows his head as he backs from the room, daring one last penetrating look into Crozier’s eyes as he does so. His gaze is inscrutable, seeing without being seen into.

In the days that follow, Crozier pares his diet down to whiskey, black tea, enough biscuits to keep the other two down. He sleeps only when he drops. Jopson appears exactly, and only, when he’s needed. There is nothing short in his manners or service, but even through the swaddling of his perpetual inebriety Crozier perceives a hesitancy; a holding-back of the genial familiarity they had enjoyed before. He is dimly aware that a conversation must be had, but it can wait. It must.

And anyway, there’s suddenly no time. The beast one night leaves on deck a Frankensteinian grotesquerie—two different sailors, top half precariously balanced on bottom, so that the whole horrible creation topples when touched, mutilated arse over head. A mocking, perverse offering—to the ship, to them, to him. Then he’s further mocked by Mr. Hickey’s capture of Lady Silence, followed by his flagrant disrespect during interrogation—as though it meant a rat’s ass that he’d once shared a drink with the overweening little man. His judgment against the caulker’s mate is spurred by nothing more than a sense of brute rage but it is sweeping enough that he orders him punished as a boy. 

Halfway through Manson’s punishment his face is a mask of tears and snot, his mouth an O of agony. A horrible sound pours from it, a splitting sob-scream that Crozier’s only heard from mortally wounded animals, and the depth of terror in his eyes is unfathomable. A black wave of guilt rises in Crozier: he’s still a boy, Magnus is, and a slow one at that. He’s powerless against someone like Hickey. Yet if whippings are meant as lessons, he seems to learn his well. 

Hartnell also responds appropriately to the lash: he lets it hurt; he sinks and tenses against the cat’s biting arc like the belly of a sleeping beast. He accepts the pain, the humiliation, for the lesson it is, with neither drama nor manful restraint. And into his face toward the last a funny stillness creeps, almost an ecstasy. Crozier clenches and unclenches his jaw: he recognizes something there. A mirroring. 

He tries to catch Jopson’s eye but Jopson is studying Hartnell’s back: it is as though he is trying to discern hidden order in the cuneiform of slit flesh and smeared blood. By the stiffness of his mouth and a certain tautness around his eyes, Crozier can tell he’s also disgusted. But he does not, cannot, look away.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I deleted my rough draft of this chapter because it was not right.

Jopson can’t sleep. As a child, his mother had called him—what was it, when he was small small and her laughter still hers? Her little grandfather clock, that’s what she’d called him, because she could tell time by when he went to bed and rose again the morning. It was not until years later, when the agonies of withdrawal turned her hateful, that he learned the nickname also referred to his being “a goddamned miserable little prick,” over whose company she would’ve preferred the company of a corpse. 

He’d ignored her then. Some days she’d railed against the whole of creation, the invective pouring from her like water from a knocked-over glass. But it comes back to him now with the pull of something that is true. Would she be proud, he wonders, this repulsive stranger his mother became, of him now, losing sleep over another man and all the dissolute things he’d like to do to him? 

He peels off his fingerless gloves, aligns the one precisely atop the other on the shelf abutting his bed. From beneath his pillow he pulls a folded handkerchief, and holding it by one corner between thumb and forefinger, he spits into his palm. All in absolute silence. He slides his right hand beneath the blanket and throws his left arm over his mouth. He does not particularly wish to do this. He does not want it—it’s another chore in what, lately, feels like a life of chores. But like a perverse doppelgänger of Crozier’s body, his insists. His hand begins to move in mechanical rhythm under the blanket; aside from this small movement he might be sleeping.

He tries to conjure images in the grainy dark of his mind’s eye: Crozier on his knees before him, mouth gliding up and down his shaft... or on his hands and knees, his back—but all he can summon is the man’s face in the rare moments he smiles truly. Even then it is a quiet smile. A quirk of mouth and brow, a warmth on the eye. Absurd, this tenderness. He might as well envision Hickey spasming in agony as the whip sings down on his trembling white buttocks. Either thought could bring him off; both are repugnant to him. His hand falls still. A moment later, he sits up and lights a candle. 

Uncanny timing, too. The creak of a floorboard some few feet his berth warns him of someone approaching, trying to creep in the dark. Then a thump, and a snarled curse. His captain. 

He opens his door before Crozier is able to knock. He is, of course, drunk, no doubt in that difficult way he’s been recently, at turns bullying and fragile. “You’re up?” He slurs.

“Yes, fortunately,” he answers in a hissed whisper. “Are you unwell? Is there something you need? It is quite late!” He sniffs conspicuously and makes a little face. 

“Leave off, Jopson. You remind me sometimes of a little old parson.”

“Funny, sir,” he answers, hoping there’s no trace in his voice of the sudden irritation he feels, “my mother used to say something similar.”

“Well?”

“Sir?”

“Aren’t you going to ask me in?” But he’s already pushing his way past, so Jopson steps aside. 

“Come in, then,” he whispers a trace louder than necessary as he slides his door closed. He turns to find that Crozier has eased himself down onto the edge of the mattress. His knees graze the door in the cramped space. 

“You shouldn’t be here, sir.”

“If I’d rung the bell it would’ve woken everyone.”

“I recall your having rung it at odd hours before. And that _is_ how it is done. If you’ll pardon my saying so, this is... quite unorthodox.”

“Unorthodox!” he scoffs. “Christ forbid anything unorthodox happen aboard _this_ ship!” He will not meet Jopson’s eye. “I’ve had a drink,” he continues. “I’ve had many drinks, in fact.” His mouth twists into a rueful smile.

“Yes sir.”

“And what do you think of that?”

“I don’t think anything of it.”

“No?”

“It’s not my place to think anything of it, sir.”

Crozier presses his lips tight and stares at his knees. He and Jopson are sitting close enough that if either one relaxed, their thighs would touch. But each conspicuously maintains his last dignifying minim of distance. When Crozier finally speaks, his voice is almost inaudible. “And what the hell,” he asks, “does place mean between us now?”

“Everything,” Jopson says with a soft, subdued laugh. “Just as before.” He inhales deeply and when he speaks again his voice is gentle yet stiff; only the drunkest man would not detect the brittleness there and the seething beneath. “With your pardon, sir, I will speak frankly. I am an even-tempered man, you know this. But I do not appreciate being baited into discussing with a drunk man matters to which both men must bring their soberest and most candid—“

“—don’t speak in circles, lad—“

“—I am not your lad, sir, so I _will_ speak plainly: if I had my way, you would not drink as you do. I am very... very fond of you sir. But if wishes were horses—and besides, sir, the audacity of my wishing anything of you ought to beggar belief.” He takes a deep breath. Can’t Crozier see how tired he is? Can’t he interrupt him, demand something of him, leave him, strike him, kiss him, anything? He can’t even remember now what it is he’s trying to say. It is all sentiment and impulse anyway: matters he will make no one’s business, especially not the man he loves. 

“Please. I require nothing of you, sir. I do not wish to fight with you nor answer your questions; for there are only a few answers which will please you. And I am not — I do not wish to talk. I would like if I could be quiet and you could be quiet. We will either be intimates or we will not, and we may or may not in the course of such intimacies, reverse—” he sucks in a breath and continues, “—reverse our customary roles; we might even behave warmly toward one another. But we will never be equals, nor may either of us have claim upon the other. _That_ is what place means between us now. That is how it shall be, always.” He cannot remember ever having spoken so much at once and finds himself now out of breath, his hands trembling. 

“There is no need, Jopson,” Crozier says with that sneering faux geniality that rises in his voice when he’s stung, “to cross bridges we’ve not yet come to, mm?”

“I do not pretend to speak for you, sir. I barely speak for myself.”

“Well, someone must speak for someone, I suppose. So, my lad, I relinquish whatever claim you feel I’ve made on you, though I’ve made none. And I am certainly sorry if I’ve given you the impression that I perceive us as equals.”

“You want me to be angry with you, sir, but I am not.”

Crozier regards him searchingly. After a long moment, he says in a different tone—wretched, sincere—“I had a man flogged for dirtiness, y’know,” he says.

“I know. I was there, sir.”

“Him and Gibson. Dirtiness.” He pronounces the word just as he had when he’d sentenced Hickey, as though spitting out something rotten.

“Was that why you had him punished as a boy?”

Crozier does not answer. After a moment, he is leaning slowly sidewise, curling in—for a panicked second, Jopson is afraid he’s about to pass out, but he comes gently to rest with his head laid awkwardly across Jopson’s breast. “I’m the one ought to be lashed,” he murmurs. This thought, though sprung of drunken misery, obscurely thrills Jopson, and he tucks it away for later.

“You must sleep this off,” Jopson says. “Back to your own bed, now...”

“Will you come with me?” His gaze is unfocused, his thin lips parted. Damn him—even now, the full measure of his years plain upon his face, the scars pitted deep in the quavering candlelight, the bags beneath his eyes—Jopson’s blood sings in his throat, in his ears. The only natural thing would be to kiss him. He does not. 

“I will... escort you back to your cabin, yes,” he says carefully instead, helping Crozier stand. He sags, a warm weight, against him, his arms around his neck. “Quietly now, sir,” Jopson whispers, sliding his arm around the other’s waist. They thread their way through the dark back to the captain’s cabin.

“I’m afraid I’m quite incapable of dressing myself for bed this evening,” Crozier says as Jopson shuts the door behind them. 

“Yes, sir.”

“You will stay.”

“I will help you to bed. No more.”


	6. Chapter 6

Crozier’s sleep is thin and short and studded with absurd dreams, but even in its remotest depths he is aware of Jopson at his side. And it is a salve to him. He’s jerked awake after only a few hours by a crack and the jolt of the ship canting further into the ice. Jopson hasn’t stirred—he lies on his belly, one arm curled at his side and the other extended overhead, as though reaching for something that lay just beyond his grasp. 

Crozier struggles to recall what had happened mere hours before. Jopson had helped him change for bed and had consented to be kissed for his trouble. Had he returned the kiss? Yes, with the same spirit with which he’d serve him tea or mend his socks. Perfect, bloodless. He recalls—what else? It is all out of order—a faint lacework of light from the candle just outside falling through the open door, Jopson entreating him to lie down, holding his hands in his own—clasping them to his chest to stop their roaming. Christ, what an embarrassment. But had he tried, at any point, to override Jopson’s will, to... press him? He searches his scattered recollection and can recall only Jopson acquiescing to be held for a little while. _It might help both of us rest,_ he’d said. _Though—_ he’d yawned and nestled his face into Crozier’s collar, and spoke in a voice already smudged soft by sleep— _I won’t stay but a few minutes more, sir..._

 _And who will wake?_ Crozier asks himself, watching the younger man’s shoulders rise and sink with the deep, even breathing of slumber. Will it be his servant or his master? The one who spoke so stingingly—all the more wounding because he spoke with artless candor—or the one who, silly with exhaustion, nuzzled his way to sleep against him like a pleased newlywed? As though he felt safe, knew he was prized—yet hadn’t he admitted to insecurity earlier, there in his own berth? Anxiety surges through Crozier as he realizes that it wasn’t his own insecurity Jopson spoke of but Crozier’s. Why else would he fail to be angry? What else is there besides anger and affection? He’ll learn soon enough, Crozier muses. It is all love or rage... or both, indistinguishable.

His head throbs right around the orbitals, as though some padded vise were rapidly tightening and releasing the worn musculature of his sockets. Could use some hair of the dog. For breakfast? For a nightcap? It’s still dark. Always dark. Mostly silent. Still, it will not do for Jopson to emerge from his cabin in the broad of morning, hair mussed with sleep. It is early enough now that he could explain away his presence there with a matter of illness, some insignificant ailment—a cold, or a touch of gastritis. 

So with great regret he shakes his bedmate softly. Jopson blinks awake. His eyes for a moment are wild and pained but he quickly regains his customary composure. “I was dreaming of you, sir,” he says.

“Oh? It was a pleasant dream, I hope?”

Jopson rolls onto his back and stretches himself with the thoughtless ecstasy of a cat. His untucked sweater lifts to reveal a few inches of lightly furred belly; his prick arcs proudly against the cloth of his trousers. “Oh, yes,” he murmurs. “Exquisite.” His lingering grin and heavy-lidded gaze invite Crozier, dare him. 

“Christ, but you do run hot and cold,” Crozier mutters.

“I just act, sir. And try to speak true.”

“As you did last night. All of that, you meant?”

“Yes. But I was also angry, sir, and I’m sorry for it. I’ve no right to be angry with you, nor to speak as frankly as I did. I hope you did not feel—chastised.”

“No,” Crozier says quietly. What he means is, he doesn’t feel unduly chastised. If anything, he ought to be chastised more severely—he _longs_ to he chastised more severely. But nor does he wish to re-enter the labyrinth of that conversation again. It is morning now, or at least the hour of dark the ship’s bell names as morning. Pleasant morning thoughts, then. He sits up on his elbow so that he can gaze down into Jopson’s worried eyes.

“This dream of yours,” he says, trying to sound roguish. “Tell me about it.”

Jopson’s face brightens, and it is the closest thing he’s seen to the sun in weeks. “Oh, sir. It was a lovely dream, indeed. In fact, I’m quite put out with you for waking me from it...” He shifts up onto his elbow and then swings his leg over Francis’ hip, pulling their pricks flush. “...unless you’d like to help me recreate it.”

Francis swallows, his throat dry. The balance of power, he knows, has quietly shifted, and both men know it. He can only nod. 

“We were lying here. Just like this, in fact. You thought I was asleep—you couldn’t help yourself—“ He begins to softly undulate his hips, creating a quiet, lovely cadence of friction. “And you reached down, just like... this.” Francis’ breath hitches as Thomas grabs his stiffening cock and he glances down. “Look at me, sir. You’re listening, aren’t you?”

Francis nods and meets Thomas’ green eyes. Something wicked smolders in them as he begins to stroke firmly up and down through the cloth. “It felt ... good. It felt so good. But it wasn’t enough. Not for you, you... your filthy mind... You had to feel me, like this.” He grunts as he frees his own cock, then Francis’ so they press and glide against one another. “Flesh against flesh. It felt—feels incredible, doesn’t it?”

“Christ, yes—“

“But you wanted even more. You were insatiable, sir, with your hands all over. It was like you had ... a hundred hands. And I had a hundred ways to feel you. But still, you wanted me to—“ he tightens his grasp. “—oh, I daren’t say it.”

“Say it.”

“Say please.”

“Please. Sir.” The honorific tumbles from his lips unasked for, but it feels as right, as instinctive, as breathing.

For a moment, something—doubt? Anxiety? Flickers in Thomas’ eyes but he quickly regains his poise. “Since you asked so nicely, I will tell you. You wanted me... ah, inside of you, sir. You wanted... you want... my cock filling you.”

Francis can barely nod assent. “Yes,” he murmurs. “Yes.”

“Do you, sir? Want that?”

“You’ve no idea how badly—“

“Beg.”

“Please.” There is no hesitation. “Please—be inside of me. Sir. Your cock.”

Thomas rolls Francis onto his back and straddles him. He’s a vision, his pale green eyes almost glowing against the flushed skin of his boyish face, the curving cheekbones and lightly stubbled jaw. He leans down and captures his mouth in a kiss. 

“Yes,” he murmurs against Francis’ mouth, “yes.”

Then three knocks, evenly paced, at the cabin door.

“Fucking Christ,” Francis growls, rising. “Stay in here. Don’t make a sound.” And he slides shut the berth door behind him.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The penultimate chapter.

“Little,” Crozier says, returning after some moments of fumbling, followed by hushed conversation at the door. “Come to see if I’d be going over to the Erebus today.”

“Will you?”

Crozier shrugs and sits down on the bed. He observes that Jopson has smoothed himself up as best as he’s able and emanates the subtly agitated air of a man on his way out of a place. 

“Well. A busy morning ahead, sir...” he mutters, rising. He seems to loom in the cramped berth. 

“Ah. I see. One thing.”

“Yes sir?”

“Are you sorry? Do you—regret this?”

Jopson turns and bends down, pressing his lips against Crozier’s in a searing but abruptly short kiss. “No,” he says. “But the matter bears careful consideration as to its prudence.” This is what he says. What he means, looking into Crozier’s face—the blue eyes, soft now with worry, the nimble little mouth, all the features plain in themselves joined together in unorthodox harmony—is that he could stay all morning, for all time, if only—if, if, if. He leaves without another word.

Crozier pours his first glass minutes later and is not without a whiskey at his elbow all day long. By the time Blanky arrives to consult with him about the ice and devise plans to shore up the ship if need be, he must lean on whatever’s near—the table, the chair-back, his friend’s shoulder—to remain upright. 

“You’re in a state,” Blanky mutters, righting him for the third time, “even for you.”

Crozier regards him with tired eyes. No mask of false mirth is needed for the ice master, one of his oldest friends. _Your only, now,_ he reflects, smiling ruefully. He’s thought many times of seeking Blanky’s counsel on the subject of Thomas Jopson, but has refrained. Out of discretion? No—Blanky is aware of Crozier’s predilections, and in fact they’d shared a few such intimacies in their younger days. But what they’d shared, laughingly bringing each other off with fumbling hands and once or twice their mouths—had been a seamless extension of their friendship in times of loneliness, and neither ever confused it with the kind of primal, transfiguring love true lovers share. 

This revelation, in fact—that the acid devouring him from the inside out was, indeed, love—so staggers him in that moment he is about to confide in Blanky, so sucks the air and light from him, that he finds himself unable to say anything at all. He waves away Blanky’s concerns with a grumble and tries to steer his friend back to the work at hand.

But Blanky reaches across the table and squeezes his hand. “Whatever this is,” he says, the familiar warmth of his voice a balm, “ _who_ ever—it will see itself through to the end. And a messy one it’ll be, Francis, if you don’t make way.” 

Crozier narrows his eyes thoughtfully. He’s probably right—he often is. And though his words are less than consoling, he takes a moment to relish the callused weight of his friend’s hand on his. By midnight, that same man’s leg has been shorn away at the knee, a gnarl of crimson and bone, because he, Crozier, had sent him out into the killing cold—the frigid black open where Tuunbaq waited. In a fit of wrath he’d done it, petty at being outmanned, reduced: seen by everyone in a crowded room for the incompetent, scramble-brained drunk he was. 

And also—how much of an _also_ this is, he’s uncertain of to his dying day—his whiskey is gone. What choice has he? So he resolves to quit drinking. But drunk as he is, he doesn’t miss the look in Jopson’s eyes as he begs for their—his—assistance. Grave determination touched at the edges by what only Crozier knows is warmth. “You needn’t worry for a thing, Sir,” he vows, and Crozier knows it to be true. 

Not that it eases the terrors of withdrawal. He suffers nightmares so vivid he can’t tell the difference between sleep and waking, the whole time deluged by a physical sickness larger than him, than the ship, than the world. Seasickness, head pains like his skull is being wrenched asunder. He is wracked by such convulsions that he is astonished he does not simply slide apart like a poorly-made toy. He sinks into black, damp depths, certain he has died; he surfaces for brief moments to unendurable pain. His body is not his, except for its suffering: of that he is lord and heir. But he’s agonizingly aware in his lucid moments that he weeps openly, soils himself, utters savageries. 

But each time he surfaces Jopson is there. Jopson speaks little and moves with his usual prim grace, but sometimes when they are alone he cups Crozier’s jaw in his hand and strokes his cheek, or warms his brow with a firm kiss. These graces draw him through each agony like thread through the minuscule eye of a needle. 

Then comes the evening he wakes to Jopson brushing his hair. He feels, for the first time in Christ knows how long, more alive than dead. It is only then that he learns the story of Jopson’s mother, how she became addicted to laudanum after her hand was pulverized beneath fallen bleachers at a circus. As he speaks, Crozier notices that he never relinquishes the last vestiges of a smile, and wonders if it is for he himself that he does it, as a way of shoring himself up against his own pain. “I don’t like to hear a woman laughing now, sir,” he notes with almost a laugh of his own—and terrible pain in his eyes.

How has he never noticed this before? How has it never even occurred to him to ask? For years has this complex, intelligent, compassionate man labored at his side—no, beneath him—and he’s never bothered with the simplest inquiries into his life, his history, his well-being. There is indeed a certain aura about Jopson that discourages such prying but _were you a decent man_ , Crozier scolds himself later, _and particularly if you—say it, if it is true—love him, you easily could have braved his anger. You’ve blundered across it before, after all, and not known it from the hole in your arse—_

Lying in the dark, shivering and alone now, he lies listening to the ship’s timbers wheeze and crack as they rock to the crawling lullaby of the ice. _I pray there is time to learn,_ he thinks to himself, _I pray to Christ there is time._


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is it. Thanks for reading!

One of the last symptoms to fade is the cold. “It’s like my body can’t recall what warmth is,” Crozier complains, hunched tensely and shaking, beneath layers of clothes and all the blankets that can be spared. Jopson has always run warm but a soft chill raises the flesh of his arms just looking at him—tonight he’s shivering more violently than usual.

“I can help warm you, sir,” Jopson offers. “If you’d like.” 

“Are you certain?” Crozier asks. “Have you given the matter careful consideration? As to its prudence, I mean?”

“Prudence? Ah. Sir, I —“

“I am teasing, Jopson. Come warm these icy bones.”

“Are you?” He says woodenly as he climbs into the bed. “It was rather—I can become quite stiff when I feel overmuch. And then I—speak in circles, like you said.”

“No, no.” Reflexively he wraps his arm around Jopson and pulls him flush. “You spoke well. Your candor was commendable and—“ he shifts position slightly and a teasing light glints in his eye. “You must be feeling overmuch now, mm?”

“Pay it no mind,” he says quite seriously. “It has terrible manners.”

“Better rude than shy.”

“Is it still... difficult, sir?”

“Christ, let’s not _talk_ about it. Give the poor fellow stage fright.” Then, after a pause, and in a subdued tone, “Is it truly such a poor idea, Thomas, for you and I to just... endeavor to make one another glad?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“I believe we can at least come close to it. Yet you spoke like it was impossible.”

“I believe it to be — difficult, sir. For me. For you. I fear there will be only pain in it, in the end.”

“I never took you for such a pessimist.”

“Not pessimism. Fear, perhaps.”

“Nor a coward.”

“No.” He laughs softly, that nearly silent laugh that illuminates his entire face and raises Crozier’s heart into his throat every time. “Is it possibly so easy, sir?”

“This is the end of the earth, Thomas. Nothing worth having is easy now.” 

“Yes sir—oh!” Thomas gives a startled gasp as Francis snakes his hand down between them and drags his fingers along the length of Thomas’ erection. Even through the cloth it feels divine. 

He pulls down the blanket (still shivering a little, Thomas notes with concern) to free them both from the constraints of the cloth between them. 

“Doesn’t seem shy in the least, sir,” Thomas murmurs breathlessly, eying Francis’ fully hardened yard.

Francis hums appreciatively, moving his hand so that they glide against one another. Then, continuing to float his fingers teasingly up and down Thomas’ substantial length, he tilts his head toward him, licking and sucking at the ridges and hollows of his neck. A whimper from deep within his throat reverberates against his open lips. He closes his eyes and inhales with deep pleasure, almost a hunger, the smell of Thomas’ collar—the soft soapiness of violet water and the salt pang of sweat. “Christ,” he mutters. “Christ, Thomas. Have you any idea how beautiful you are, how magnificent?” He tightens his grip. “I don’t deserve you,” he murmurs against the light patch of hair just below the nuzzled-open collar of his shirt.

“What—wait, sir—“ he grabs him by the wrist, stilling his hand. “That’s not true.”

“ ‘s true,” Francis insists, gazing up at him. “Look at me, look at yourself—I’m near old enough to be your father. Gap-toothed, disgusting—look at this gut—and you, you’re perfect.” But there’s no rancor in his voice, only the huskiness of lust. Thomas realizes with a mix of intrigue and alarm that this self-humiliation makes him harder, more eager. Something to pursue someday—but tonight is not about power, as difficult as that is for him. 

“None of that, sir,” he says. “Not tonight. Just—be here, with me. Let us...” he releases Francis’ hand and strokes his fine, pale red hair, “...be happy with one another, ourselves. I—love you, Francis.”

The words tumble out unbidden but once he says them, he knows there is nothing else he might have said, and that if he had a thousand lifetimes he would’ve spoken the same five syllables each time.

“And I you,” Francis says, his voice hoarse. He holds Thomas’ face in both hands and kisses him deeply, gently. For some time, they lie like this, just kissing, their hands roaming one another’s bodies. Finally, Francis rolls onto his back, pulling Thomas astride him, and they break their kiss.

Thomas smiles down at him. “This feels familiar.”

“Ay,” Francis nods, breathless.

“Where were we, do you recall?”

“I was begging you. To fuck me.”

“That’s right — and now? Do you still wish for it?”

“Yes. Jesus, Thomas. Yes.”

“I’m glad.” Thomas braces himself on one arm and leans down to pluck a small vial from between the mattress and the wall. “Otherwise this would’ve seemed rather presumptuous.”

He pours a little of the oil into his palm and dabbles his fingers in it. “This may feel strange,” he warns. “Trousers down.” 

Francis arcs his hips to work his trousers off and comes to rest on his elbows, his knees spread. This, Thomas senses, he has not done before, so he very gingerly presses his fingers against Francis’ puckered hole and begins to rub. Francis jerks away, clenching momentarily, but immediately comes to rest again. 

“Instinct,” he mutters, closing his eyes. “Don’t stop.”

Thomas begins to stroke him, steadily, as with the other hand he rubs increasingly firm circles with his fingertip. He is listening carefully for any sound of distress, and while there are none, Francis is rapidly growing soft. One deft pivot of his knees, and Thomas’ mouth engulfs Francis, who moans brokenly and reaches for Thomas’ hair. He tenses as Thomas’ finger presses into him but relaxes immediately—and the sensation of him hardening again in his mouth is immensely gratifying. He almost wants to leave off the rest and return the favor of months before, to work his thick cock with tongue and lips until he spends at the back of his throat—a dizzying thought.

_But there is time,_ he thinks to himself. _There is time._ To map the pleasures of one another’s bodies, explore the shaded alcoves and sunny hillocks of one another’s hearts, to touch and speak and, if God is merciful, grow comfortably silent together, as close as—some unnameable darkness pulses at his mind’s edge, a sorrowful constriction of all hope. He returns to the present, which is perfect enough, or close to it; for now the man he loves is groaning and clutching at him, pushing... he has three fingers in him now and—there—he angles for that lode of bliss, strokes it; Francis lifts his hips with a strangled cry (thank God the ship is mostly empty, the crew preparing for the Carnivale) — “please,” he is panting, “please, now, Thomas.”

So Thomas does. With trembling hands he smoothes a layer of oil over his shaft and aligns himself carefully. “Brace, sir, here—we go.” 

Francis grits his teeth against what he expects to be the bad kind of pain, the kind he’ll contract from, but all there is is a slow, dilating burning. It too is pain but a purifying and patient pain, and one inseparable from pleasure. For there’s Thomas above him in the dark, his lovely face luminous in the shadows, his eyes soft with pleasure and not a little concern. And his cock inside of him, and his slender, lightly furred arms, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, braced either side of him. Thomas’, surrounding him; hemming him in. 

“ ‘s all right, Thomas,” he says. “It’s wonderful.” 

Slowly, Thomas draws out and slides in again, his lids fluttering shut. “You feel—fucking Christ, sir. I’ve not the words for it. It’s like—ah...” his face is rigid with ecstasy; his gaze, though unfocused, locks with Francis’. He grasps Francis’ cock in his hands and begins to stroke in cadence . “It’s like — we fit, sir. Like you were made—to—take my cock. Just—I’ll not last long, I’ve wanted this — years, sir, Christ, it’s — “ his words break apart into panting and moaning.

Francis rises to meet him each time he pushes in, and swears each time he grazes the magic spot deep inside. That, he’s never known the likes of before—a pleasure so sublime it falls just short of unbearable, and Thomas, though words fail him now in his pleasure, does not fail to keep the exact pace between each thrust and each deft stroke of Francis’ prick. In layers and sweeps the sweetness of sensation builds deep in Francis’ belly.

“I’m—I’m so close, I — Christ, I’m — “ Thomas drops his mouth to drape slack, hot kisses along Francis’ jaw, the corner of his mouth. Then on an in-thrust he stiffens, driving the head of his cock one last time against that delicious place inside of Francis. “I love you so much, Francis—“ Thomas murmurs before he bites his lip, hard, and comes, groaning it out into Francis’ jaw. 

This finishes Francis. His first climax in years washes over him and for a moment he feels nearly bodiless, as though his worn body is a cup bearing a blinding light. He is distantly aware of Thomas’ fingers in his hair, his lips on his; all of it. And as it fades, slowly, all that’s left is his love for the man now pinning him down, breathing hard against him—his love, his Thomas.


End file.
